Rio 2016 - Alternative Views of the Top Medal Winners

The United States, Great Britain, and China dominated the Rio 2016 Olympic medal count, taking home 258 medals, or roughly one quarter of the 974 medals awarded during the games. The trio were one gold short of a total of 100 golds among them.

As is true with all statistics, you can slice and dice the medal count in a number of ways to give shape to different stories about Olympic medal winners. The UK Telegraph published an alternative view of top medal winners on Monday, the data portion of which we’ve reproduced here to provide you with an interactive look at the medal winners of Rio 2016. The highlights:

Islands on top, per capita. With a single medal each, Grenada and the Bahamas outshone countries worldwide based on per capita medal count. Bahamas’ single medal may shine a bit brighter for the dramatic finish that earned Shaunae Miller the gold in the women’s 400 meter as she dove across the line.

US, China sunk in ratings by strong GDPs. The Telegraph’s medals per £100 billion in GDP measure sent some top medal winners to the bottom of the rankings. The US and China fell from 1st and 2nd to 74th and 75th, respectively.

Azerbaijan #1 … per athlete. Ranked 14th by total medals, the 56-member team from Azerbaijan won 18 medals in Rio, or 0.3 medals per athlete. Russia and Great Britain - both among the top 10 in total medal count - also finished in the top 10 based on medals per athlete.